Fact file

With an area of 8000 square miles (20,800 square km), Wales is less than a sixth the size of England and a little larger than New Jersey.

While Wales is part of the United Kingdom and a member state of the European Union, it also has its own devolved Welsh Government, responsible for certain local affairs.

The population of Wales is around three million, sixty percent of whom live in the southeastern corner of the country. One quarter of the population of Wales was born out of the country, the vast majority being migrants from England. Cardiff, the capital city, has a population of 300,000.

Wales is officially a bilingual nation. Everyone speaks English and almost a quarter of the population also speak Welsh, the strongest survivor of the Celtic languages. The vast majority of Welsh-speakers are concentrated in the north and west of the country.

Wales was a largely Anglican nation (attending the Church in Wales) until Nonconformism swept Wales between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. This spawned many different divisions of Methodists, Baptists and Calvinists, as can be seen in the legacy of chapels everywhere in the country.